Western Short StoryThe Outlaw Sheriff Otto PilsnerTom Sheehan

Western Short Story

Darkness reigned in
the Virginia valley in 1864 where an advanced unit of the Union army
forces was camped. Rifles and cannons were silent, and every few
moments a standing sentinel might catch sight of flames from a few
distant fires, friend or foe according to the direction where
sighted. The silence of the night was broken by the sound of running
boots. Immediately there came the order to “Halt,” loud and
convincing, and it was followed by the sound of a second set of
pounding boots and quickly chased by another yell, and then a third
order to “Halt.” A rifle shot dropped the first man running
across the area from the temporary jail for army deserters. He fell
to the ground screaming, his words spoken in German and only Sergeant
Otto Pilsner admitted to understanding the escaped man’s last
words.

Answering an
officer’s questions about the shooting, Pilsner said, “Sir, he
was screaming about getting home. I guess he thought heading toward
the enemy’s lines, where he thought he had a better chance, him
being a deserter to begin with.” The two men spoke a few more
words, unheard by anybody else, and the incident was closed as a
deserter shot while trying to escape his punishment.”

The company area
settled back to finish off a night’s sleep, before war came to
visit again.

One trooper, Norman
Dupres, rolled over in his blanket, but sleep would not come. When he
finally fell asleep he said goodnight to his wife far away in three
different languages. One of them, whispered as were the other two,
came as, “Gute Nacht, süßer Liebling, bis wir am Sonnenaufgang
sprechen.” Pilsner, if he heard it, would hear, “Goodnight, sweet
darling, until we speak at sunrise.” Pilsner, if he knew the man
who uttered that version of goodnight, would have strangled him
before dawn.

With a dozen years
of military service in the Prussian ranks, Otto Pilsner had been a
quick rise as a non-commissioned officer in the Union army in the War
Between the States. A few officers had taken note of his military
presence in several activities demanding skill, intelligence and
bravery under fire, and he was marked for promotion almost from the
start.

But there was a
downside about Pilsner that none of the officers were aware of.

This night brought
the downside into a new focus,within the person of Norman Dupres, the
company clerk and a mere private in the ranks.

Norman Dupres was a
French-Canadian, from New Brunswick, a student of languages,
self-taught, who had been caught up in the fervor of the war and
enlisted in the army from the Massachusetts area of Lynn where he was
a laborer. His wife and child were now living with her family in
Massachusetts. He had not seen her in more than a year and thought
about her continually, talked to her in his mind in the several
languages he kept studying, all which helped his fluency. Some days
he thought about her using nothing but English or French. This day
was set aside for German appreciation. That appreciation did not go
far with the death of the German speaker who tried to run away. He
kept hearing the escaping prisoner’s final words, “Helfen Sie
mir. Helfen Sie mir. Er ließ mich so los er konnte mich schießen.
Pilsner ist ein Mörder. Er tötete meine Frau in Deutschland."

Dupres, of course,
heard it first as, “Aidez-moi. Aidez-moi. Il m'a libéré ainsi il
pourrait me tirer. Pilsner est un meurtrier. Il a tué ma femme en
Allemagne.” Then moved it to, “Help me. Help me. He set me free
so he could shoot me. Pilsner is a murderer. He killed my wife in
Germany.”

Dupres had no trust
in Pilsner from the first day he had been assigned to this company
and Pilsner swaggered in, almost as if he still wore some kind of
Prussian embroidery on his uniform. The colonel’s orderly, Desmond
Riley, had spoken of him in an aside to Dupres; “He comes here like
he’s going to win the war himself, but is content to sit here at
regimental headquarters and not in a unit on the line. Some hero,
heh?”

Dupres had said,
“Well, some of us escape the carnage being here at this level. The
colonel needs support around him.”

Riley responded
with, “The colonel doesn’t need heroes here; he needs heroes up
there in the line units, up where the real fighting goes on. Back
here we’re only mere pawns, dummies if you will, in this game of
war.”

“I suppose you’re
right on that account,” Dupres said, “but something about this
man is cold and very devious, the way he looks at things, the things
he says in explanations, and the things he mutters under his breath
almost.”

Dupres immediately
wished he had said nothing about the muttering, which was always in
German. He felt he had some kind of advantage by knowing German and
keeping it to himself. And he’d never want Pilsner to know about
his language abilities.

Of course, there
were other German-born soldiers around the Union forces, and also in
the Confederate army for that matter, many of them having served in
the Prussian army in the first Schleswig War that supposedly was over
in 1851. (It had started up again in 1864 and ended with the Gastein
Convention of 1865.) At this time Dupres knew of no others in the
company who had served in the Prussian ranks during that first war or
in the period thereafter and had brought that experience with them,
but they were in the ranks about the regimental company.

Dupres and Riley
were in constant contact because of their responsibilities and a bond
developed between them. Once, in secrecy, they had agreed to help
each other if the need ever came, from their basic responsibilities,
Dupres as the company clerk and Riley from his association with the
colonel.

With luck on their
side, all three men, Dupres, Riley and Pilsner, were separated from
the army in July of 1865. The colonel had by that time promoted both
men to sergeant and Dupres saw that the records of both men were
taken care of promptly, showing time in rank somewhat previous to the
official word, all with Riley’s help. Riley told Dupres that
Pilsner mentioned to the colonel that he was headed west to Abilene,
Kansas to become a sheriff.

The night before
leaving the army, Riley was killed with a single stab wound in the
chest. He was found behind a supply tent by a sentry who told Dupres
that Riley had stuck three fingers wet with blood onto a piece of
canvas. Dupres knew immediately that Riley was telling him who had
killed him.

Five years later,
Dupres and his family, now with two children, headed west.

Dupres knew they’d
end up in Abilene.

There really was no
way that Dupres wanted to work as a cowboy, having seen too much of
their work on the way west. He planned to teach school and open a
language school on the side. His wife agreed with him. “You came
through the war, Norman, and you say that was luck. Those cowboys
have a harsh life. I’ve seen that every time they are near us. I am
positive you can make your way with the skills you are so good with.”

Abilene, as if
waved at with a wand, came as their destination after significant
changes en route, and Dupres found work as a school teacher, all
based on army records that Riley had “taken care of.”

One day when he was
with his wife, he saw Pilsner standing outside the sheriff’s office
and the jail. Dupres said to his wife, “Never let that man know
that I understand German. Never. If you ever see him talking with
others, tell me who those people are, or who they might be from any
source you can. It is important to us.”

That’s all he had
to say.

And the day came at
the store where she worked when she saw Pilsner talking with a man
wearing a black derby hat and a gray vest with a feather on it. She
told her husband. The next day that man approached Dupres and asked
if there were any openings in his language classes held in the
evenings. “I wish to learn German,” the man said.

Dupres said, “I
only teach French and Spanish, and I am fairly new myself to the
Spanish, but we could grow together in it.”

The man in the
derby hat said, “You do not teach German?”

“No,” Dupres
said, knowing where the word would go.

The derby hat was
doffed and the man left and made his way directly to the sheriff’s
office. Dupres, who had followed him, did not know where to turn for
help. But when he discussed it with his wife, she said, “Some men
at the store talked about him in a corner. They don’t trust him at
all and believe he hass convicted some innocent men to gain a solid
foothold in this town. In the past two years several men charged with
crimes have been hung by a court who has pushed the charges according
to the sheriff’s word. They are convinced he is a killer in his own
way.”

“Do you know who
those men are?” Dupres said.

“”I know one of
them. He is the husband of a friend who comes often to the store for
her yarn. His name is Victor Stanbury and he has a ranch not far from
town. One of his men, a man by the name of Schneider, was convicted
of a killing and hung in a matter of hours after the guilty verdict.
Stanbury said that his man knew of Pilsner in the other country.”

“We have to get
to Stanbury and I will not leave you here with the children. We have
to go tonight and don’t let anybody know. Don’t tell the
children. We’ll wake them when we leave. I have to tell you that
two of Pilsner’s deputies speak German.”

In the middle of
the night, they hitched a carriage to a horse and slipped out of
town. In a few hours they were at the Stanbury ranch. Dupres told
Stanbury all that he knew about Pilsner, and told him of his fears of
the man, and that two of his deputies spoke German.

“I knew none of
that,” Stanbury said. “What else bothers you?”

“He will find our
trail out here. We will push on and try to get somewhere else before
he finds us.”

“Well,”
Stanbury said, “I believe that you best make a stand here and help
us. I am bound to disclose this man. He arranged the death of one of
my men, and others no doubt. Some of us have felt that all along. He
manages to get too much done in too much hurry. We will make a stand
here if he comes for you. You’d be at his mercy out on the trail,
you and your wife and your children.”

Stanbury called in
his foreman and said, “Brad, I want you to get to Joe Mulcahy and
Swede Malvo and tell them we need help. I think Stanbury and his
deputies will come here later today and make a charge against Dupres.
We have to stop him before he goes further in his masquerade.” He
paused and said, “Do it pronto, Brad, and get them here with as
many of their men as they can afford or muster. We’ll hide them in
the barn. Get to it.”

Stanbury’s
foreman was on his way in minutes.

Later in the
afternoon, one of Stanbury’s men sauntered into the ranch yard and
casually said to Stanbury, “There’s five riders coming up the
trail, studying ground, and I’m sure they’re following the tracks
of the carriage that came in last night.” He went off casually to
tend his horse.

The ranch yard was
quiet when the five riders came into the ranch, Pilsner leading them,
two of them his deputies, and two he had called for a posse ride.

“Stanbury,”
Pilsner said, “we had a murder in town last night and we know that
it was committed by that teacher and language gent, Dupres. We
tracked him this far. Did he stop here last night?”

“He sure did,
Sheriff,” Stanbury said. “We sent him on his way with some grub
my wife scraped up for them in a hurry. She knows that woman of his.
They went on their way before daylight.”

Pilsner did not
like what Stanbury said. “Well, you won’t mind if I look around,
will you? Just in case they didn’t get out of here.”

“I just told you
they left here,” Stanbury said. “That should do it.”

“Well, it doesn’t
do it for me. This is a murder case and I won’t leave a stone
unturned to bring that killer to quick justice.”

“Just like you
did to my man, Sheriff?” Stanbury said, the bristles starting to
show in his make-up.

“I don’t care
how you feel about another murderer who got what he deserved, and I
don’t care what you feel about Dupres either,” Pilsner said He
turned to two deputies standing apart on their horses and gave an
order. "Hans, George, geht überprüfen die Scheune. Wenn
irgendjemand im Weg ist, sie schießen. Wir sind in der Verfolgung
eines Verbrechers, eines Mörders, und niemand kann uns aufhören.
Gehen."

The two deputies
started off to the barn. Dupres, hearing the order, stepped forward
at the loft door and yelled out, “Stanbury, he told them, the
deputies, ‘to go check out the barn. If anybody gets in your way,
shoot them. We are in pursuit of a criminal, a murderer, and nobody
can stop us. Go."

He screamed it
again as the two deputies raced toward the barn, only to be met by a
wall of men who came out of the barn, rifles leveled at every member
of the posse.

The two deputies
stopped short, reached across their bodies and dropped their guns on
the ground with their left hands. Pilsner, irate, caught in the
middle of all his evil works, reached for his gun, brought it out of
his holster and aimed it at Dupres still standing in the loft door.

Stanbury shot
Pilsner out of his saddle, his gun still in his hand when he hit the
ground.

The German-speaking
deputies told all they knew, which was enough for court held on the
spot. They were advised to leave the territory before they would be
brought to a quick trial of their own. They left, heading south in a
hurry.

When Norman Dupres
erected his sign for language classes, he listed French, Italian,
Spanish and German as his disciplines.